Category: Technical Blog

More Work Stuff

I posted that poor me I’m being paid for such an easy job,boo hoo post a little too soon.

It was easy because I didn’t have to name or create the database or anything but I did have to spend hours looking for the right plugins and stuff.I’m working with WP 2.2 and a lot of plugins don’t work on this new WordPress

Then I used a theme whose png files must not have been compressed properly or something because they were really visible in IE and didn’t blend at all.So I made psds in Adobe ImageReady then converted them to gif or jpg in Photofiltre and they look better.

you idiot it was ie 6!!! it doesn’t support png files and you knew that and yet you still blathered.

This “it’s too easy” stuff comes from my earlier uphill climb web experience working with insanely unfriendly environments like AngelFire,Purehost and Myspace all of which disallow mostly everything fun.

A friend suggested that it’s not easy for them to do it which is why they pay someone to do it for them.I guess it’s like math for me,code for them makes their eyes glaze over.

Also: (shhh!) I think this might be a school project!(shh!)

Any “easy” work I do get is always balanced out by the really hard jobs like my ongoing project for an online jewelry store.The CMS is custom built by me using that edit in place Ajax doodad.It turned out that my other really easy CMS wasn’t easy enough. But now it’s just like Flickr and I am a badass!

Get famous, then put up some ads.

Really? Do you really need that 5 dollars a year you get from Google if someone clicks an ad on your site? More like 400 someones–just to make $5? I don’t. And I am poor.
I think it’s just like all the other trends.Someone monetized their blog so someone else did it and so on.And let’s face it:sometimes the only new content in a blog for weeks or months are the ads. So there’s a service they do provide. I don’t mind ads in blogs.I do mind picture ads that are so close to the content that if I click anywhere near the ad all of a sudden I get whisked away to advertiser land,disrupting my read of how much someone hates Lindsay Lohan or is jealous of Ms.Jolie’s beauty. Yes I read that crap.
My point is don’t clutter up your site or blog with ads picture or text and annoy your random readers all in the name of tiny money. Because you will make more cash just by keeping your eye out for loose change on the sidewalk.
Wait until you have the traffic to justify it then annoy whomever you want.

The working Poor


I am a workaholic. This is good because then I make money. But it isn’t only that. I work in web design, but what a racket it is.
I am an honest, nice kind of girl who sometimes gives TMI to her clients about her limits for the job. Usually one spends the interview time blowin hard about what they can do and how great they are.

I say I can do that…. um, maybe I can’t do that bit,though.

I say it’s a racket and an evil one because of those who have gone before me before my client has gotten to meet me.I am speaking of designers who disappear after the job is done.I believe a job is never done.And I don’t charge for stuff that I set up that needs a bit of maintainence now and then.Because I set it up.And it usually only takes a couple of minutes to fix whatever it is. Continue reading The working Poor

Working on a WordPress Customization

I was hired by this NYU student to make him a site so he could have a question and answers website.His original idea was a vlog site although he didn’t know that this was a well known and well used option for blogging.Video blogging isn’t that new,after all.

I had been using WordPress as a cms for a little while at the time and wasn’t nearly enough knowledgeable about themes as I wanted to be. Nevertheless I knew enough and had picked apart a free theme and decided to go from there.The theme was life-is-a-byte and funnily enough was a revision of another theme by n.designstudios(I think).

Being hired by a young man in his 20’s was kind of a kick.
I thought all you 20 year old guys were computer programmers from birth.
–And I also assumed this was going to be an easy do- it- in- your- sleep job.It wasn’t in the end – my client was (as well he should be) very picky about his theme.The mistake was my thinking it was going to be a breeze. Humility.
This particular job required a lot of graphic design and the use of photoimaging software.I ended up resketching his banner image avatar by hand and then scanning it into my imaging program and futzing with it until he liked it. I used photographs from his site and sketched him by eye then compared that sketch with the drawing he gave me when we met up.I could’ve just used the drawing he gave me but the site looked slick and the sketch wasn’t slick enough-it didn’t match.
There is a touch of the school marm about me.He wanted to learn how to make style revisions himself but didn’t know css or html.And since I wanted to use the site in my portfolio I was concerned he would break the xhtml of the templates if he got too crazy.I preached a lot about the use of html for lists when you weren’t actually making a list and the overuse of the strong tag.I made a template for his answers posts in the end.He’s been good about using it so at least all his written posts look the same.Oh-in the end he liked the immediacy of written posts over video posts.But I wish he would use more video posts because there are a zillion blog blogs and not as many video blogs and the internet could use the variety.

As it is the theme isn’t valid xhtml because of the plugin for collapsing categories which generates really bad html. I managed to cut the errors down to about 5 or 6 but as we all know if it ain’t valid it ain’t valid.But the clicking open of the cats was really important to him and since I don’t know javascript I’m stuck using that plugin(from dragonflyeye.com)